Bellringers
by Carlitia S. Howarding
Summary: These are some bellringers that I've had to do so far. Some of them are unfinished, and your input would be greatly apppreciated. Those unfinished ones will be marked as such, but input on any of these bellringers would be favorable.
1. CSI Bellringer

CSI Bell Ringer

Part 1

As I called the number, the dog whined at me, and I looked down at it, and said, "You had better be grateful." He looked up at me, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth and his head cocked to one side. I sighed, and my attentions came to a female voice on the other end of the line. She had a heavy Russian accent, and almost all of her words were indiscernible to my ears, which didn't have much practice with deciphering foreign accents. Plus, she talked so fast, and somewhat loudly, I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

"Excuse me… ma'am… I'm sorry, but…" I finally gave up. She wasn't going to let me talk any time soon. I sighed again and pressed "End" on my phone. The dog pawed at my leg, whining again. His tongue flicked out, as if he wanted me to tell him the news myself.

"Looks like your owner is so worried about you, that she won't let anyone talk besides herself." He looked up at me with begging eyes, as though to say 'Please say it isn't so!' Then, I saw Catharine Willows come up on the screen, talking to Warrick, and I wandered back over to my chair, and listened in about these two teens killed this deaf guy just to get his beer. As soon as I sat down though, the phone rang again.

On the caller ID, it was the same number that I had called about the dog, so did I answer? Of course not. I bit my lip a little when the answering machine came up. But this time it was a man's voice, with very good English, so I understood him clearly.

"I know you're here, little missy. And I know that you've got my dog." I started to nip at the tip of my thumbnail. It's just something that I do when I'm really nervous or scared, and it absolutely drives my dad nuts. But it's a habit- what can you do? Then he spoke again,

"Now, didn't your parents ever tell you not to bite your nails?" My heart stopped cold in my chest, and I looked at the receiver in horror. My head whipped around the room, and I jumped up and ran around my dad's little ranch, locking all the doors and windows, drawing the blinds, and turning out all the lights. Then, I found the coat and linens closet, and hid there. I took a deep breath to ease my sky-rocketing blood pressure, only to have it shoot up again when I heard heavy bootsteps across the tile flooring of the kitchen, accompanied by nails clicking in time with the boots, and a light switch flicked on. I tried to ease my fear, saying stuff like this only happens in the movies. This is just another one of Aarek's pranks to try and freak you out. Well, this one was working like a charm.

The booted person stopped, and he said something to the dog. After that, I verified that the booted guy was the same one as the one that had freaked me out on the receiver. A couple of seconds later, I saw the shadows of two big boots and four little paws, and two curt barks.

"So, this is where she's hiding, eh? Not very original. Good boy." He sounded so much scarier in person. He seemed to stoop down to praise the dog, because the shadow of his feet got longer, darker, and wider. My hands were shaking, and my palms were clammy with sweat, along with my forehead. My pupils were probably huge, and my eyes were drying out from being exposed to the air for so long without blinking. I slowly began scooting back into the hanging shroud of coats. As I did that, he gave a harsh laugh.

"Do you really think that hiding yourself in coats will save you from me? You're dumber than I thought! Maybe we should leave her alone, Tobi. This might not be any fun." My breath hitched hopefully in my throat 'Please,' I thought, 'please just leave me alone. Just go back to where you came from, and never come back.' He gave another coarse cackle.

"She actually thought…." He laughed again. "Alright, Tobi, let's take her back. See what we can get." I balled my hands into fists, preparing to defend myself when he came into the closet. Maybe I could land a couple of good hits to the head or chest. But, to my surprise, he didn't open the door. I heard him fish around for something, and then heard a dripping noise. The longest seconds of my life ensued, each drip echoing around my brain like it was a damp, abandoned prison. The sudden burst of light blinded me, and he shoved a moist Kleenex into my face and over my mouth. The sharp smell of chemicals cut through my head, and I was out cold before I had the chance to scream. For, well, I don't know how long, things got fuzzy. The only things I somewhat remember are the rusty creaks of an old, rickety truck, the constant hum of the highway, and the jolting one finds while traveling on a dirt road. Also, I think I fell off of something, because of some unexplained bruising in my sides, and they both hurt like friggin hell.

But I definitely remember waking up in the basement of a probably abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere. The whole place smelled of disinfectants- mainly bleach. And, to me, when something smells like cleaners, it should be clean. That's the only logical way to think. But, in this case, I was dead wrong.

The basement was -in a word- gross. There's just no other way to put it. A politician couldn't have said it any different. It was just plain gross. Though the floor was picked up, there were cobwebs in the ceiling, mold was starting to grow around the practically ancient water pipes, and little puddles of something and stains from whatever else were everywhere. In addition to it being in a severe need of spring cleaning, it was dark. The only light that filtered in was from a little window in the ceiling on the far end that it revealed that it was morning on the surface.

Straight across from me was a door, left slightly ajar, that gleamed pure white and in complete contrast to the dump that I was sitting in. I didn't really think about whether that door was purposefully opened or not; I just went in, and what I saw, almost made me retch.

Part 2

It was like the old coroner's room on CSI. There were four stainless steel tables, each with its own water spigot to wash off the bodies. The tools, polished and arranged, gleamed menacingly on the little platforms that were off to the side of the table. There was a light board where the X-rays and other stuff were put up in order to determine cause of death. What was worse, this room was complete with a morgue- and corpses.

There were two bodies on the back two tables, one was a middle-aged female, and the other a boy, not much older than ten or eleven. I could tell that they were both naked, even though they were covered by the thin white body sheets. The woman was closest to me, and I could see that she had already been opened up, because of the Y-shaped stitching across her chest and down her abdomen. She was fair-skinned and blonde and would have looked young, if not for every wrinkle and crease in her face. She had a small mole on the upper left corner of her lips. If she were alive, she probably would have been drop-dead gorgeous for her age, but death had paled her and made her a sickly yellowish color that reminded me of cat vomit. Her ice-blue eyes were still open and her lips were parted a little, dirt had matted her hair. Beneath the examination table, there was a big Rubbermaid tub. I carefully pulled it out, and picked through the contents: a bloody scarf, an old woolen sweater, and what looked to be a Russian printing of the New Testament. Maybe this was the woman that had answered the phone yesterday evening.

The boy next to her was practically her spitting image in a male child's form- her son, perhaps? His body was pale as well, but not the sickly yellow of his poor mother's. He was more white, suggesting that he hadn't been dead as long. He had a small frame, and his ribcage protruded cruelly out from his chest. His eyes were open as well, the same icy blue as the woman. He was definitely her son. I felt tears welling up beneath my eyelids and my stomach began to tie itself into sailor's knots.

"Good morning, Princess." I screamed, and fell into blackness. Then I noticed that I was sprawled out on the ginormic leather La-Z-Boy with my legs draped over one arm o f the chair and my head pressed into the other. My head was dripping with sweat, which formed a nasty little salty sweat-pool that had run down the arm of the chair and soaked any hair near the puddle. My head wasn't the only thing drenched- my whole body was. And I could smell it, too. Before I could dwell on the fact that I smelled like I had run a marathon a week ago and not bothered to take a shower, my dad, God bless his soul, came running down the stairs, hardly awake enough to keep himself from keeling over. His Brooklyn accent calmed me like it never had before,

"Luchesa? Lucy, baby, are you alright?" I yawned inside my mouth, and asked,

"Huh? What happened? How long have I been sleeping?"

"I'm not sure, baby. I found you out cold when I came home. I thought it best just to leave you there. But you started screamin' a couple a minutes ago, and just about scared me out of my mind." I looked at the wall clock, and watched the pendulum swing for a few seconds. I eventually pulled my eyes up to the clock face, and saw that it was three in the morning. Thank God it was Friday night, and I, surprisingly, had no obligations tomorrow. I gave him a tired grunt, and said,

"G'night, daddy." He smiled that warmly exasperated smile, and his eyes twinkled.

"G'night, baby. I love you." I only barely heard the last part of the sentence. Despite my terrifying round with the phone stalker, I fell asleep again. But this time, thankfully, Mr. Stalker did not haunt my dreams.


	2. Best Day of My Life

Best Day of My Life Bellringer

I was sitting at the teeny-weeny kitchen table in my teeny-weeny apartment, anxious, nervous, and scared. A few weeks had passed since I sent in the final copy of my manuscript to the publisher, and now I held a heavy business envelope in my hand. I licked my chapped lips. Ah, yes, the moment of truth. Waiting anxiously for it and dreading it at the same time. This instant right here could make or break my life. A whole Ivy-League education, wasted. Dear God, give me strength.

I reached to the little pencil cup in the middle of the table and fingered the handle of the letter opener. I slowly pulled it out, mindful of the fact that it could easily cut off my pinky. I held it in my hand gently, pointer finger resting on the dull edge. My whole arm was beginning to tremble, and as I raised the knife to the envelope, my hand rocked violently with nervous spasms. I began to have second thoughts about having a miniature Exact-o knife cut open my mail. I slammed it down on the already poorly-finished table, and let out about ten tons of pent-up air. I slumped in my chair and buried my head in my hands, and thought about curling up into the fetal position. Then logical part of my mind sought to kick in. I scoffed at myself. The results of three full years of drafting , re-drafting, and re-re-drafting were sitting there, physically harmless, on my kitchen table, and I could not bring myself to see whether I had succeeded or not. Pathetic, just pitiful. How could I be so afraid of something so harmless?

Despite the logical approach to the situation, I still felt a twinge of doubt. Simply nerves, doing their job. I began to chew my lip, and started reaching for the tip of the firmly sealed flap. I felt the heaviness pressing down against my skin as I grabbed onto it and jerked upward. After the first tear, the rest was easy. I ripped the rest open hungrily and lifted the letter encased inside.

There was no fold in the side I was looking at, so I flipped it over and saw a red wax seal holding the letter closed in a tri-fold form. I easily broke the seal and opened the letter and began to read:

"To Carlitia S. Howarding or Whom This May Concern," blah, blah, blah, blah, I thought. I skipped a little further down the letter, past the fluff about 'thank you for choosing such-and-such publishing' and the statistics and other crap. I read the last sentence,

"…, and it has been decided"… what? What have you decided? Oh, who am I fooling? They publish classics, they should know about a good cliffhanger. I turned the letter over-nothing, of course. I let out an exasperated breath. I looked over at the envelope, and saw the answer to my mini dilemma. There was another paper in the envelope that in my excitement that I hadn't noticed. My lips twitched into a wry smile, shaking my head at my inability to observe. I plucked the paper from its little hiding place behind the torn edges and opened it up, and screamed

"to publish your book, 'The Gift'" I didn't pause to read any more. That was all I needed to know. I had succeeded in my plight. I was now among the likes of many before me in one aspect- Anne Rice, Stephen King, Juliet Marillier, and thousands of others. I was everything I'd wanted to be since the beginning of middle school.

I was, officially, a published author.


	3. Pizza Delivery

Pizza Delivery

Ugh. This sucks, period. Friday night, last house on an unfamiliar street. So what, right? All the houses were battered, with various shades of paint chipping off the siding. I bet that none of these houses have been inspected for asbestos either. Most of the lawns had been allowed to run rampant, looking like an urban savannah rather than a neighborhood. There were gnarly trees in the back yards that I could see from my position on the sidewalk. These houses were houses where guns lived. Thin, rabid dogs barked at me savagely and ran after me as though I was carrying a machete and trying to kill them. I walked up to the door, rang the bell, and waited for like, ten minutes. As I was about to walk back to the car and get the heck out of that creepy neighborhood, this freakishly old guy answers the door. His skin was splotched like a stubby, short-necked giraffe, and his hair was practically bleached white. The joints in his hands stuck out grossly from his hands, aging him another 20 years, along with the steel walker he leaned on.

Poor guy must have forgotten to put in his dentures this morning, 'cause he started babbling at me, and I must have had the most incredulous face on, because he stopped a few sentences in and gave out an exasperated sigh. Then he grunted and gestured for me to come inside. I stepped onto what was probably supposed to be a blue rug, but was covered in long, gold hairs- probably from the giant mutation of a golden retriever that was sleeping/wheezing in the back corner of the foyer.

The whole house seemed to smell like a hospice- and to me, that means stale peanuts and soap, then the old guy himself smelled, well, salty. Like he was a perpetual sailor or something, he spent so much time at sea, he could never get the ocean smell off his skin. So, in my head, I resolved to name him Uncle Salty (yes, I like Queen). Uncle Salty shuffled away to get his money, when he took a huge step away from his walker- towards me- and whipped a fist into my face with more power than what I thought any old man could muster. The hospice house went black.

And I was tied to a freaking folding chair in what looked like an interrogation room. I mean, this came right out of Hollywood, I swear; flickering fluorescent light in the ceiling with dead bugs crowding out the already dim glow, big long steel table with nothing on it that was polished enough to reflect the scant light into my eyes, and in the dark shadows that were the back of the room, I was sure that Uncle Salty was standing there, right across from me. And lo and behold, I was right. What fun.

He stood there and stared at me. I sat there and stared at him. This ensued for God knows how long. I had no idea, because, one: I wasn't wearing a watch, and two: I couldn't have checked it even if I'd wanted to. Even so, I eventually said to him,

"You know, I would kind of like to know why I'm here. This really doesn't happen to me every day, believe it or not."

Finally, he shifted, startling my eyes with movement, and drew something slowly out of his pocket. I wasn't scared at all. This guy was probably some Hollywood special effects guy who got fired or laid off and never lived that up and moved on. I was practically laughing in my head, trying to think of the story that got him into this sorry state. When my mind got to the part where he was actually injecting drugs into the actors to give the movie a sense of "reality", Uncle Salty whistles, snapping me out of my wildly hilarious visions of a effects expert gone wrong. I hear jingling, and that creepishly huge retriever-dog came in through a little plastic flap in the steel door, carrying a silver case. I know- who puts a doggy-door in an interrogation room? So not Hollywood.

Puppy dropped the case at his master's feet, and Uncle Salty proceeded to open the case and take out a long cylinder, and connected the long thing to it, which I could now see was shiny. He stepped into the light, and I saw what he had been preparing for me- a syringe. And something clear sloshed around in the tube. I could only guess at what it was. Yeah, this guy was an out-of-work special effects man. I repeated my question from a couple of minutes ago,

"Hey, do you MIND?! I would like to know why I'm here!" He gave me one of those looks that asked, 'Don't you already know?'. He asked me in return,

"Do you know what this is, little miss?" I felt my lips turn down into a frown. Apparently, Uncle Salty was deaf, too.

"Answer my question first. You owe it to me, since I'm the one tied up in the chair for no reason." He chuckled a little, reminding me a little of Jigsaw.

"You have a point," and he paused, "but telling you would take too long."

"It's practically the weekend. I've got time." He raised a finger at me.

"Ah, but I don't." I gave up. Obviously, he wasn't gonna give me any answers. Why waste my energy on such a fruitless expedition?

"I ask again, do you know what this is?" I looked at it like I was thinking.

"I think it's a syringe." He chuckled again, reminding me of Jigsaw, again. He addressed the giant golden bump-on-a-log dog,

"This one's got spunk, Nelson." Wait, I'm not the only one? Aw, hell. He's practiced. "Very good! Now, what do you think is inside the syringe?" I sighed, and looked at the syringe again, and applied my good sense to the situation,

'Poison?" He smiled lightly, but it was a cold smile that sends shivers down your spine.

"Correct again! And, what kind of poison is in here?" I answered immediately,

"How am I supposed to know?!" He laughed out loud, and he could have been the guy that read the poem at the end of "Thriller".

"I don't know either. It could be completely harmless, or… it could be deadly." I scoffed. What a drama queen, excuse me, king. "Just in case, any last words?" Yep, definitely a drama king.

"Why me?" You would be dying to know, too, no pun intended. He paused, as if he was trying to come up with the right words. Come on, it's not like I was the first to ask.

"Because… I can." Great, I go out to deliver pizza on Friday night, and I run into the worst possible mix of Hannibal Lecter and the Joker. Just my friggin luck. I began trying to slip my skinny hands out of the cords that bound them to the chair, but found they were tied accordingly. Not cool. My adrenaline rush started to wear off, and now I was really scared. He was coming at me with a needle, and I have the worst case of needle-phobia there is. I began to shake uncontrollably and babble off. He just chuckled his creepy Lecter/Joker chuckle, and inserted the needle into the bare flesh on my arm. I uttered a shrill scream, and fainted.


	4. Halloween Prank: Unfinished

Halloween Prank

I was so excited, I couldn't put into words. My friends and I had planned this since November 10th of freshman year at Firmont High, and finally, Halloween was upon us. Noah, Clark, Jaymee, Cherry and I were going to prank our worst enemy and her posse: Andrea Jackson and Company. Andrea had been our enemy since grade school, and we swore that we would get her back, and tonight would be the night.

Picture the stereotypical rich high school blonde girl: captain of the cheerleading team, homecoming queen, absolute bitch to anyone under her level of financial and social status, which, to her, was everyone. Add bright-pink Barbie-doll hoe makeup, way-too-tight Hollister/Abercrombie wardrobe, a tendency to brown-nose teachers, double the ditziness, and you get Andrea. You could bet both your parents' 401k that every single rumor started in our grade began with Miss Perfect Preppy Nightmare. Her sadly well brainwashed cronies did exactly what she said, and you could so much as look at her and be guaranteed at least a black eye from her doormat quarterback boyfriend. Well, it's senior year, and she and the clique have spilled enough chocolate milk on us to save Africa's starving children. It's time to get them back, and then some.

We'd asked Dr. Marks, the principal, to advertise a Halloween fun house over the afternoon announcements. It was $2, and you had to book a tour. The principal made sure to mention that the house was being run by high-school kids in hopes to entice people into coming. It must have worked, too. All but one tour was filled within the first week, and the remaining tour was being left open for you-know-who. In order to get Miss Priss to come, Cherry and Jaymee, cheerleaders with their heads screwed on straight, bribed about half the football team, and that was pricey- about two hundred dollars worth of Jack, Jim, and Jose and then another hundred in cash. Considering the fact that they were somewhat wasted, we could say that was cheap compared to what it could have been. So, we were assured that Andrea and her peeps were coming, because they were already booked, and there were NO refunds.

Our ragtag gang of nerds, geeks, cutters, goths, emos, flunkies, potheads, and outcasts were ready for action. Since three years ago, the emos and goths came up with the twistedly creepy, bloody ideas that would be put to good use come Halloween, the nerds had been bringing those cruel devices to life, the geeks were helping out the nerds with their demented science projects and making them technical and life-like, and the flunkies, potheads, and otherwise unacceptable people began contributing to the bribes early-on since they had no brains to utilize for the creation of our devilish masterpiece.

I peered out the small round window in the attic of our perfectly rickety old house. The 7:30 tour was running out the front door, being chased by the butler who had just "killed" the maid. I suppose I'll hear all about how good or bad our house had been. Andrea Inc. was scheduled for 8:00, and she was a lot of things, but she was never ever late. 7:53. Less than ten minutes 'till the moment of truth. I looked over to Noah, our gang's emo, who was in charge of the west wing of the house- the "father's wing", consisting of the library, gun room, smoke room, and lastly, the study. His section of the house was done first, so he would come up here and sit with me. He was dressed like a Confederate soldier, with blood-red paint decorating his temple and part of his jacket. His mousy brown hair was tied in a little rat tail, and his eyes were sparkling hysterically. The goth's white face-paint still hadn't worn off yet, even after three full hours of tour after tour. He grinned at me like a maniac and started wringing his cap like a rag. I could tell he was just as antsy as I was.

Cherry came up behind me, dressed as a maid with a make-up job that made her look like a dead marionette. She ran the north wing, the "servant's quarters", the kitchen, laundry room, and the sleeping quarters for the servants (which were several little rooms). Her bright red hair was put half-up and curled, and her half-ponytail had a big black bow in it, giving her some sort of a sickly innocence. She smiled and waggled her eyebrows, and turned her eyes to the window as well. The maniacal glow was surfacing in her face too.

Jaymee came up too, careful not to rip her Victorian-style gown too badly. Her hair was tied up in some crazy up-do, courtesy of one of the emo kids who'd seen Sweeny Todd a few too many times, and made her look like an uber-rich version of Ms. Lovett. She had a knife wound across her cheek and the "blood" leaked from a corner of her mouth, and another couple of knife wounds in the chest and stomach. Man, the goths pulled out all the stops on this one. Jaymee's east wing, the "mother's wing" was the finale, so it had to be good, I guess. The east wing was the parlor, nursery, music room/library, and master bedroom. She grunted as she tried to pull herself up into the attic, and squeaked as she did a seal-flop onto the floor. She finally heaved her legs up, and looked at us,

"My makeup's all messed up, isn't it?" That's our Jaymee, the resident ditz. We love her, though. And, of course, Cherry had something to come back with,

"If it was, the goths would have a fun time redoing it." Jaymee sighed with relief.

"So it's OK?" Cherry gave her a 'duh' look.

"It's goth makeup, honey. You can only mess that shit up on purpose."

"OK, can everybody quit cussing?" asked Clark, nearly scaring us out of our wits. Clark is the nerd of the group, and a party pooper. He didn't dress up or let the goths make him up, but it didn't really matter; he was the tech guy/project director. He had to make sure all the effects were running smoothly, and everybody was where they needed to be. Despite the stereotype, he's good at ordering people around, and surprisingly, they listen. One way or another, he gets things done.

"Mama's boy." Noah muttered under his breath. He and Clark joke around with stuff like that, 'cause Noah's parents are hippies and try to let their kids lead whatever life they want, where there's no such thing as real punishment. Clark's family has strict rules, regulations, and values, and discipline was certainly a reality.

"Well, I don't see a point in cussing, you can use perfectly clean words and get the same point across." Noah rolled his eyes at him. Clark rubbed his palms on his khakis (no suspenders here) and asked,

"Well, are we ready for the grand finale, people?" I turned to him and asked,

"Do you need to ask?" He nodded at me quickly, ashamed of asking a stupid question like that. Noah stood up and donned his soldier's cap.

"I guess I need to get downstairs and get ready. 'Scuse me, Harvard scum," he said to Clark, climbing down the precarious little ladder leading up here. Yes, Clark is going to Harvard. He also sent in applications to Yale, Columbia, and Princeton, and got accepted into all of them. Yeah. He's smart.

"Come on, ditz, we'd better go too," Cherry told Jaymee, and they went down in succession. Clark looked at me, and said,

"I've got to get the "murder" scenes up and running again. Good luck, artillery mistress." I smirked my evil little smirk. I had to go get my troops in order, too. I was in charge of the last tour's "grand finale"- the gathering of all "troops", Goths, emos, flunkies, and etcetera, for our little prank.

I picked up the little yellow push-to-talk radio sitting beside me, and pushed-to-talk,

"Hey, Dallas, you and your buds ready? It's almost time for action." Dallas was practically the king of the potheads and flunkies. There's several "big dawgs" in that world, but Dally is the most popular. I could tell he hadn't taken a joint for a while, 'cause he sounded sorta sleepy.

"Yeap, we are go, cap-y-tan." Sweet. This is gonna be epic. I stood up and brushed the dirt and dust off of my white, lacy dress. It looked kinda like a wedding dress, but not as fancy, and somewhat bloody. I then checked my face in the dusty mirror in the corner. I still had a "gunshot wound" to the head that was covered in "blood", and some blood spatter on the front of the dress. I grabbed the voluminous black cloak from off the rack by the mirror, and looked behind me at the window.

A mob of Playboy bunnies and random guy outfits crowded the front doorstep. Most of them were simply black and white bunnies, but as always, Miss Jackson had to be different, to announce her status. She was a pink hoe bunny, with black fishnet tights and way too much makeup and jewelry. Her floppy bunny ears flopped in the sudden wind, and all the rabbit skanks squealed, and hung on to their boyfriends' arms for warmth. Doormat quarterback boyfriend tried to do the same, but Queen Hoe Bunny shoved him off of her.


	5. Old Lady

I slowly rocked in my old wooden chair, listening to the creak of the floorboards. My old joints began to throb a little from the arthritis. The Advil I had taken earlier had begun to war off, and somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I knew that I would have to go to the medicine cabinet in my bathroom to get more. 'Just a little nap before I get up,' I thought. I closed my eyes, and for a moment, I was a young girl again.

I had been a sad little girl on my eighth birthday. Daddy was all dressed up in green with a helmet, and said he had to go away for a while. It was February of 1946 when my father had gotten deployed to Germany to stop Hitler and end the Nazi regime. My childish innocence and faith in my superiors kept my hopes alive that my father would come home safely, just the way he was when he left. Though he did come home, he came back without an arm and a Purple Heart two years later. Since my older sister had gotten to the rebellious stage in her life, and Daddy had come from the army more disciplined than we thought, they butted heads more than anyone would have liked. I simply sat there and did what Daddy told me to do, and I became the peacemaker of the house. I was the link between the both of them, and felt the tension and anger in between.

My teenage years went by in a blur- the 50's were care-free, fun, and had no ominous cloud of war overhead. The 60's were quite a different story, however, they were riddled with talk of the Communists and 'Charlie', the Space Race, and hippies ran rampant. The assassination of President Kennedy, God rest his soul, shook the nation to its core, and we thought we would never pull ourselves together again. The 70's brought me a husband and identical twin boys, and later a little girl, along with music that anyone would love to forget. The 80's brought about a universal interest in metal and rock, and big hair laced with the scent of hairspray followed me everywhere, and bugged me to no end. The turn of the century, my children went their separate ways, and my husband was diagnosed with liver cancer, and died in '01. Which left me alone in my home, with the memories of my life and work.

"mom…Mom…Mom," I heard, jolting me back to the present. My youngest son and daughter recently moved in with me so they didn't have to take me to a hospice. My son smiled warmly at me.

"Need anything, Mom?" he asked quietly

"…I think I'll take an Advil"


End file.
